One of the most common complaints people have today is not having enough time. We all only have 24 hours in a day, and yet there are those who always seem to be able to do so much more than the rest.
What is your secret? After all, you work the same hours, so you should have the same amount of free time. It’s not like you waste your time. Okay, you watch a little TV, but who doesn’t? Everyone needs to relax in some way…
In today’s modern world, there are more ways than ever to waste time; the very thing most of us claim we don’t have enough of and yet carelessly spend as if there is always tomorrow.
Whether you have come to accept it or not, you only have a finite period of time in which to live your life. You may not realize it, but you’re probably wasting your time. It may not be gushing out for you to notice, but like a bucket with dozens of little holes, it all builds up, or rather, it all leaks out.
It can be difficult to avoid time leaks. The world we live in is more competitive and more demanding than ever. We’re being asked to work longer hours and it’s easy to get overloaded with information, whether you want it or not.
We are hardly ever alone anymore, with mobile phones and the Internet to offer instant communication from all over the world 24 hours a day. There are plenty of opportunities to be distracted too, be it with advertising or messages from our social networks.
All of these distractions depleted your time bucket, but you don’t have to allow them.
You only have 24 hours in a day. That’s 168 in a 7 day week and you’ve probably already spent a third of that unconscious leaving you with 112 hours. Let’s say you work 9 to 5, 5 days a week. There goes another 40 hours that are not yours. You have 72 hours left to spread throughout the week and that doesn’t include the time it takes to shower, cook, etc. Let’s take another 3 hours a day for essential activities. You have 51 hours left. 26 of them are Saturday and Sunday. The remaining 25 means you have 5 hours per night per week. What do you do with those?
How many of the following distractions consume your remaining hours?
- Watch ‘Reality’ TV – Watch other people live their lives. Is it a strange concept or are we all a bit more voyeuristic than we would like to admit? And it’s not just this particular genre, it also includes many other ‘nutrient-free’ shows.
- Surfing Web 2.0 – Digg, YouTube, flickr… If you get nothing from these websites besides the entertainment factor, what are you doing?
- Email Verification – Just like your post, your emails are delivered to your inbox. How often do you check for new posts arriving on your doorstep and how often do you check for new emails?
- Stats Check: We love knowing how popular our websites and blogs are, so we’ll keep checking our stats to see how many visits we’ve had or how many AdSense clicks we’ve racked up in the last 20 minutes.
- Commuting: Traveling to and from your workplace is often downtime, but does it have to be? Learn a new language, plan your next vacation, read and respond to your emails. The same can be applied to other situations where you don’t need to focus 100% on the activity, for example, listening to an audiobook while taking a shower.
- Junk Magazines – What does it matter who dates who or who gained/lost 20 pounds? You may be on your lunch break or sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be doing something worthwhile.
- Play Video Games – Everyone loves a little fun, but why not play a real game with real people and combine fun with exercise? Not only would he be multitasking, but he’d probably be adding some water to that bucket of his.
Be honest with yourself. How much time are you wasting on distractions instead of using that time to work on what you want from your life or spend it with the real people in our lives?
The distractions will always be there. The opportunities and people we care about will not.
What have you done with your life today?